Another Agricultural Weekend

We went back to the Salon International d'Agriculture this weekend to do more exploring. I wouldn't have thought it was possible until I experienced it myself, but it was even more crowded than before -- several times, we ended up caught in shoulder-to-shoulder traffic jams. There's really not too much to explain, so I thought I'd just post a few pictures of the different exhibits we enjoyed.

Catching Up

I put off posting an update last week, as I was hoping we'd be able to let everyone know when we'd be back in the US (this is near-entirely dependent on arrangements with my firm). We're still waiting on that answer -- at this point, it could be anywhere from the middle of May until the end of June. However it works out, we know that we're only going to have a few days between when we land in the US and when I'm back to work -- it's going to be an incredibly hectic move, but we're looking forward to getting back to 'real life' (these months in Paris, while amazing & wonderful, feel like a little bit like suspended reality). We'll try to keep everyone updated as soon as we have a better sense of what's happening.

We spent a really low-key Valentine's Day in Paris. The Six Nations rubgy tournament is in town, so we went out to watch the France-Scotland game. The place we'd intended to go was full-to-capacity, so we ended up back at The Moose, the same bar where we'd watched the Inauguration a few weeks ago. Matt tells me that Scotland never had a chance, although I really very little idea what was going on the whole time (I've done pretty well at learning how to watch a hockey game, so maybe rugby should be my next project?). Then we went out for pizza, the same thing we've done for each Valentine's Day we've celebrated together.

Valentine's Day doesn't seem to be nearly as big in Paris as it is in the US -- I actually had a hard time finding any Valentine's Day-themed greeting cards when I went to look. The restaurants didn't seem much more crowded than they do on any other Saturday night, and the price of flowers didn't shoot up (at least, based on their sidewalk display prices). It was kind of nice to have this much more relaxed experience -- just slightly better suited to our generally low-key, quiet preferences.

Matt had his spring break a couple of weeks ago, and last week was my turn. I had grand plans to get out and see some things that have caught my eye but not Matt's, but I ended up hanging around the apartment quite a bit, trying to get things arranged with the firm. I got a bit of getting-ahead schoolwork done, which takes a little bit of the pressure off as we move toward the end of the semester -- my final exams will happen in just five weeks! -- and also did some little projects around the house, including a fair bit of knitting.

Last weekend, we finally got to do something we've been looking foward to since before we even left the US -- attend the Salon International d'Agriculture. It would remind you of a state fair (minus the midway), except that the purpose is really much more exhibitional than competitive (there are just a few, already-award-winning examples of each breed of animal on display, plus tons of educational/promotional booths). The French still seem to have a conception of themselves as a very agricultural group of people -- toward that end, the event was huge and completely packed.

This is one of the exhibit halls -- there were six more just as big and just as crowded.

In addition to all the animal exhibits, there were two large halls full of displays from the different regions of France. I was incredibly excited to find that my all-time favorite beer ("the Dodo", which is produced on Reunion, where I spent an undergraduate semester) was on sale, as well as a few other of my old favorites (fried dumplings called samoussas; a kind of French take on curry). We also enjoyed wandering through the wonderful cheese, and meat, and wine, and chocolate, etc displays -- I think we might have to find time this weekend to go back and do some more shopping!

Absolutely nothing was accomplished this weekend

This one will be just a quick update, as we weren't very interesting at all last week. :) That doesn't mean that interesting things didn't happen: in fact, Saturday marked six months since our wedding in St Andrews! We had planned a nice day together -- which, unfortunately, was totally derailed by a migraine headache that kept me at home all weekend. (This happens to me about 3 or 4 times each year; kind of a "Murphy's Luck" situation that it had this be this weekend.)

We did get out to dinner on Friday night with our friend Sadie. (I've known Sadie since my 1L year, as we were in the same section. We also both ended up on the London summer program in July and August 2006, and now we're both here.) This was the first time we'd picked a restaurant from the great guide that Matt's mom sent me for Christmas -- and it was a resounding success. The guidebook said it much better than I could have done:

"If an anthropologist was looking for the ideal setting in which to study the way that the French relate to each other and food in public settings, he or she could do no better than this place, where everyone is skilled at the art of creating both privacy and conviviality in a small, shared space. Otherwise, it's just about as close as you can get to tasing homely old-fashioned French home cooking without being invited to dinner by a Parisian."

I think we've found a place that we'll look forward to sharing. I'm so glad for that book, as we would never have stumbled upon this place otherwise.

(I also want to digress from the more usual topics and brag about my little sister just a bit: over the weekend, she and her teammates placed second in the Kansas 4-H hippology contest...which qualifies them to represent the state at a national contest this fall. I used to do these contests, and can tell you that you really wouldn't believe the work involved in preparing for them. Way to go, Anna!!)

A little more French, a little more home

During our time in Paris, we've really been making an effort to learn to cook more, better meals. We think we've been doing pretty well -- our standard repetoire now includes spaghetti all'Amatriciana, salmon with agrodolce sauce, and mussels provencal(-ish), among other things. This week, we decided it was time to take on a French classic/stereotype: crepes. We found a crepe pan and a spreader-spatula thing (no idea what it's actually called, either in French or in English) at the store, and came home to give it a try. The first thing we discovered is that our crepe pan wasn't compatible with our stovetop, so we pulled out the skillet and kept trying.


The first few efforts were less than impressive, but we started to get the hang of things before we were halfway our supply of batter. We still need to work on making them thinner and rounder before we really feel like we've got it, but we're starting to come up with a reasonable approximation of what we'd get from a street vendor.


Over the weekend, we'd hoped to try again (and much earlier in the day) to visit the leopard cubs. Unfortunately, the winter wind came back to Paris, and spending an afternoon outside didn't sound at all appealing. Instead, we visited the Natural History Museum, a companion museum to the Evolution Museum we saw a couple of weekends ago.

The ground floor contained the collection of modern animals. We spent most of our time looking at the skeleton collections (we're both science-geeky enough to really enjoy looking at the inter-species differences), but there's also an extensive collection of soft-tissue dissections for those who are so inclined. Most of them are still identified with handwritten labels, completed so long ago that the card is yellowing and the ink is fading. "Once upon a time," many of the items in the display cases were really important to advancing the study of comparative anatomy and physiology -- it amazed me to think that I was still free to wander around and examine what some truly notable scientists had once spent so much effort to achieve.


The first floor was even more fun: dinosaurs! I don't remember having a "dinosaur phase" as a kid, but I may just have begun one right now :). Apparently, the Natural History Museum in New York has made casts of many of these fossils for display in their museum: but, the skeletons have been given different poses so they can indicate a different "mood" (e.g., the Tyrannosarus in New York might seem more ferocious).

The display cases in this room held a couple of surprises: several specimens which had been collected in Kansas. I knew that my home state has tended to be a relatively good place to go fossil-hunting, but was still pleasantly surprised to find a bit of my childhood home all the way overe here in our temporary home.

Inauguration Week

Even though we were several thousand miles away from the action last week, we still took time to celebrate the inauguration of President Obama. We met up with several friends at a Canadian bar -- it was kind of funny to see all the screens which are usually filled with an array of hockey games tuned to CNN. We got there fairly early (about an hour before the swearing-in) and were fortunate to find places to sit; by the time the ceremony began in earnest, it was shoulder-to-shoulder.

I couldn't believe how homesick I felt for D.C., even though I would have (1) been incredibly cold and (2) not really been able to see anything if I'd attended in persion. As it was, the experience was still incredibly inspiring -- we laughed and cheered and even sang (the National Anthem) alog with the crowd. Even from across an ocean, I could feel the spirit of hope and change in Washington.

The picture doesn't really capture the crowd -- but it was incredibly packed.

Over the weekend, we attempted to visit the menagerie at the Jardin des Plantes, which is the second-oldest zoo in the world. (Its first animals were brought to Paris after the French Revolution; until then, they had been part of the private zoo kept by Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI in the Palace of Versailles.)

Since we missed the zoo, we ended up just exploring the park for a couple of hours -- as you can see, even in winter, it's beautiful. This is a view facing west, toward the Museum of Evolution which we visited last weekend.

Unfortunately, we ended up having a quitessentially "when in France" kind of moment. We arrived in the late afternoon, somewhere between one and one-and-a-half hours before the announced closing time. (We had come specifically to see some six-week-old leopard cubs which had been put on display only that week.) The attendants refused to sell us admission tickets, saying that they felt an insufficient time was left for a visit to the zoo.

We've had similar experiences elsewhere: for example, the hostess in a crowded restaurant will often turn you away if all the tables are filled ("C'est impossible! C'est fini pour ce soir!"), rather than asking if you'd like to wait for one to be available. Slowly, we're starting to get used to this mentality -- and secretly, I've been starting to wonder if it might not, on balance, be a more pleasant way to live.

(I hate the way the waiters in the US often seem so anxious for you to eat quickly and be on your way. Restaurant food seems more expensive here, but the service charges are built into the menu prices, so there's no expectation for a big tip -- and no financial incentive to 'turn the table.' I've really been enjoying learning to eat more slowly and enjoy the conversation... Of course, it's hard to remember that when it's 9:50 PM, I've just realized there isn't enough milk for breakfast, and the grocery store security guard refuses to let me in despite a posted closing time of 10:00. It's still a new-philosophy-in-progress, I suppose. :))

This picture really isn't worth enlarging -- but I'm posting it anyway because I wanted to share the beautiful sunset we saw on the way home.

School Makes A Comeback

This past week focused pretty heavily for both Jess and I on school. On Wednesday, I had the final exam for my big class that meets for three hours every day. It was, you guessed it, a three hour long exam. While not a lot of fun either to take or to prepare for, I think it went pretty well. While there are still two exams this coming week, much of the work for the semester has come to an end.

For Jessica, it was her first full week of classes for the new semester, along with some extra lectures thrown in for good measure. She has a bit of a crazy schedule with a number of both early morning and late evening classes. Fortunately though, she does not have to attend a class until 9:30 pm at night one evening and then arrive for class the next morning at 8 am as she had thought she would. There is at least one professor she is really excited about, saying that she hasn’t had a professor who was both this knowledgeable about their subject and excited to teach it since her undergrad days.

With all the focus on school, we’ve been something of homebodies. But last weekend, we were able to go visit one of the museums of natural history in Paris that focuses on evolution and speciation. On the lower floors were extensive taxidermy collections you would expect from a flagship French museum. There was even a room dedicated to endangered and extinct species, such as the Tasmanian tiger (extinct), Cape lions (extinct), and mountain gorillas (endangered) along with many others. The upper floors of the museum though were dedicated to exploring how people have shaped evolutionary pressures on animals and plants. The obvious example is in agriculture where there were examples of primitive corn, modern corn and many of the intermediate forms, and examples of domestic farm animals next to their wild ancestors. It was all very impressive, even the building was a gorgeous mid-19^th century exhibition hall.

The real highlight of our week though was going to visit Nick, Monica, and their new baby Victor (we watched their dog Luna during the birth in December). I had not yet met Victor, and Jessica had only seen him immediately after he was born. We ended up spending the whole evening at their apartment and went to dinner at a crepe shop. It was a lot of fun to spend some time with Nick and Monica.

Happy New Year!

Sorry that this post has been a little delayed. We're each back to school this week; Matt's first semester continues for a few more weeks, while I have begun a new schedule of eight (!) classes.

Our New Year's celebration wasn't particularly exciting...I'd procrastinated a bit too much, and ended up spending most of the day/evening finishing up a paper for one of my fall semester classes. We tried to make it out to one of the big celebrations for New Year's (the Parisian equivalent of the Times Square party), but the metro train we were on was held up for several minutes. Rather than greet the New Year sitting on a crowded subway underground, we wandered out into the street -- just in time to hear cheering crowds and popping fireworks. Without planning for it, we'd ended up near some of the largest department stores, so we spent a fairly long time (until I was too cold to stay out anymore!) looking at their beautiful Christmas lights and window displays -- much more peaceful and far less crowded than our original plans; to my mind, perhaps even better if things had worked out as we'd expected!

Later that afternoon, we headed up to London for a few days. Because we'd each been to London before, we concentrated on filling in the thing we felt like we'd missed the first time: perhaps my favorite was the long afternoon we spent at the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum. This was the extensive underground complex from which the British fought World War II. Unfortunately, our pictures came out terribly -- as you can see in this "image" of the bedroom/office prepared for Churchill. :) (Apparently, he slept here fewer than five times during the entire war -- he actually observed most of the Nazi bombing raids of London from the roof of the War Department. )

We tried to see the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. The last time I attempted this, I was nearly crushed against the fence, and couldn't really see much of anything (I was kind of trapped behind a large stone pillar). This time, I figured we'd be smarter and stand several hundred feet back, so as to have a broader vantage point -- of course, many, many other people had the same idea, and we ultimately ended up behind the tops of too many heads to see very much.

An unobstructed view -- if you shoved a few hundred heads into the foreground, you could approximate the view we had of the Changing of the Guard. :-)

Our last night in London, in front of St. Paul's Cathedral.

Joyeux Noel!

We had a wonderful pre-Christmas vacation in Geneva, simply enjoying the time to get away and enjoy both the break from classes and the joy of the season. The city itself was beautiful, all done up in lights and holiday decorations -- and the location, deep in the Alps, certainly didn't hurt.

We had a couple of truly amazing experiences while in Geneva. First, while we were wandering through the center of town looking for a restaurant, we were surprised to hear someone say (in English), "Excuse me, did you ever attend Georgetown Law?" It turned out to be a woman who used to work in the Career Services office -- in fact, she was the person who finally convinced me that this program in Paris (which has pushed back my graduation date by one semester) was a good idea! She had resigned over the summer, but I hadn't heard any details: it turns out that she moved after her husband was transferred to Geneva. It amazes me how small the world can be!

Second, we very nearly got to meet Kofi Annan (the former Secretary General of the United Nations). We had seen flyers announcing that he would be speaking at an interfaith prayer service. The entire service was really lovely (and, since Genevans speak much less quickly than Parisians do, Matt and I were able to understand more than we'd expected), but the highlight really was Mr. Annan's speech. It was incredibly interesting for me, in particular, because he addressed some of the topics that I've previously covered in my law classes. We tried to go speak with him after the service concluded, but he was whisked away just before we would have reached him.


A few of the things we would have liked to see were closed for the holiday break -- including C.E.R.N., the European nuclear research center. We did take the bus out to see what we could see -- which turned out to be "the Globe", which hosts CERN's visitor's center and is the jumping-off point for all the tours. Deep underground was the Large Hadron Collider, which was in the news a few months ago because some commentators were speculating that turning it on might open up a black hole around the Earth.


We also tried to visit the United Nations in Geneva, which now occupies the building where the League of Nations was founded. Even though the building was emptied for the holidays -- completely closed from December 20 - January 4 -- there was still a large (but completely orderly) protest being carried on outside. From what we could discern, the protesters seemed to be the family members of Iranian dissenters who were living in an unstable region of Iraq, and were not receiving adequate security.


We took a side trip to Lausanne, which is about 40 minutes from Geneva by train and the seat of the International Olympic Committee. The town is beautiful, with a 13th Century cathedral (still in use today) and castle -- but also exhausting, as it was literally built into the side of a mountain.

By the end of the day, we were ready for a good night's sleep -- which, unfortunately, wasn't to be. Our flight back to Paris was at 6:30 the next morning, so we ended up sleeping in the airport to be sure that we'd be on time for the 4:30 check-in. Neither one of us got very much rest, but we had an easy trip home and took long naps before venturing out on Christmas Eve.

Paris is beautiful nearly all the time (perhaps even during the nearly-constant drizzle we've had for the last several weeks!), but I really think Christmas is my favorite time (so far, anyway). The lights are absolutely gorgeous, sparkling down streets and storefronts.


After a good, long nap, Matt and I wandered out to the largest Christmas Market in town, which runs along the Champs-Elysee. Each vendor has his own little wooden hut -- selling anything from vin chaud (sweetened, diluted, and heated wine) and crepes to Indian textiles to light-up Santa Claus hats to virtually anything you can imagine.

[We had seen similar Christmas Markets in both Geneva and Lausanne -- one of the things that surprised us was how some items were in each market (e.g., collapsable wooden fruit bowls and, almost inexplicably, Confederate flag belt buckles).]

We headed home to make a simple Christmas Eve dinner together, then attended the late-night Christmas Eve service at church. I was a little saddened when we had to go through a security check -- nothing strenuous, just a quick inspection of my handbag -- but I appreciated the impulse. (Since dyanamite was found in one of the major department stores, the Paris police really stepped up security measures around the holiday, deploying more than 500 extra officers to patrol the streets.) Once inside, though, it was a beautiful service full of holiday music. My favorite part was something I remembered from home -- at the end of the service, the sanctuary lights were dimmed, and we sang Silent Night by candlelight.

We celebrated on Christmas Day by sharing a holiday dinner with some French friends, who live just outside Paris (an easy trip by commuter train). It was a wonderful, traditional dinner -- we began with foie gras and continued to escargot; after the main meal, we had a beautiful bouche de Noel. We spent a quiet afternoon and evening at their home -- just enjoying each other's company and the holiday. We weren't home until late that night -- with just enough time for me to call my family and Matt to call his -- before we fell back into bed. I was surprised at how much I missed everyone, but we really enjoyed spending our first married Christmas together in our temporary home.

We've spent the last few days back in Paris, catching up our sleep and some of the errands we'd let slide over the end of the semester. (The last big project on our list is weatherproofing the front door, where huge amounts of cold air have been pouring in. As a stopgap, we've lain a heavy towel across the bottom and hung a duvet cover across the door -- but we're still losing quite a bit of heat and would like a more permanent solution.) Then, just after the New Year, we're off to London for a few days!

The One In Which We Acquire a Dog...

...but only temporarily. Nick and Monica (see the Thanksgiving post) headed to the hospital on Friday morning for the birth of their son (who finally arrived this morning), so their dog has come to stay with us for a few days. Matt and I have been having a wonderful time with our canine houseguest (the cats are a little nonplussed, but being pretty good sports about the situation), and we're looking forward to having her with us for most of the week.

I'm not sure whether she thinks that our apartment is too cold or that our throw blankets are snuggly.

We finally got around to decorating for Christmas this week. Since we didn't want to spend very much acquiring big decorations that we'd just have to either ship back or get rid of in a few months, we kept things fairly minimalist this year. We did hang our stockings and put up an improvised Advent calendar (by the time we'd thought to purchase one, the stores had sold out -- I suppose that's what we deserve for delaying our Christmas observances until after Thanksgiving...)

I covered all the paintings and pictures in the apartment with inexpensive wrapping paper, and then used them to improvise our decorations. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out...

We debated for a long time, but ultimately decided not to buy a Christmas tree this year -- even the smallest trees are pretty expensive, and don't last very long at all. (Rather than the blunt-cut stump I've always seen in the US, the trees here have their trunks sharpened into a point and inserted into a solid stand. The tree would be completely dried out within days.) BUT, rather than forego the entire tree experience, we decided to bring a bit of the Charlie Brown Christmas Special into our apartment and decorate the ficus:

I put about six feet of tinsel and four felt stars on there...I'm really not sure it could stand up to too much more!

We also celebrated Matt's birthday this week! We spent his birthday night wandering downtown, including to Notre Dame to see their beautiful, gigantic Christmas tree and the Illuminated Nativity scene. We finally decided we were hungry and a little bit cold, so we picked a nearby restaurant for dinner. The food wasn't fantastic, but the ambiance was fun: there was a live pianist and both our champagne and dessert came with sparklers. (The French seem to use sparklers rather than candles for birthday cakes.)

Later in the week, I tried for a little taste of home: Texas Sheet Cake, from Ellen's fantastic recipe. I think I managed to over-sweeten the frosting (miscalculated the imperial-to-metric conversion for the sugar), but overall it came out pretty well!


For me, classes wrapped up last week, so all that's left is one week of exams. Matt's semester continues until February, but he gets two weeks off for Christmas and New Year's. We're headed off to Geneva on Friday afternoon, but are coming back to Paris for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We're still figuring out where to go for New Year's; I had been hoping we'd be able to go to Greece, but we're going to wait until things settle down a bit. (Since we'll be away, we likely won't be able to update the blog until we're back home next Wednesday.)

The Second Sunday of Advent

Our weekend got off to a chilly start this week: our heat and hot water went out on Friday afternoon (both run off the same machine). We were very, very lucky that it happened at 4:30 -- after a series of frantic phone calls, we were able to track down a repairman who could come the next day. Had it been even an hour later we might have spent the whole weekend chilled and unshowered. We ended up spending all of yesterday (Saturday) waiting for the repairman to show up, but I'm feeling incredibly grateful for the warm shower I took this morning.

The days in Paris are getting much, much shorter now: tomorrow, the sun will rise at 8:30 and set at 4:54. This, of course, means that my most favorite time of year (the holidays!) and least favorite time of the year (final exams) are coming quickly.

At this point, I've done four major presentations and written two papers. Before the end of the semester, I've got one more paper, one more presentation, and two or three exams -- it's going to be an intense two weeks, but I'm looking forward to the break that comes right after. I can't believe that my schooling in Paris is already halfway over!

Even though we're trying to concentrate on school, we're also thinking a lot about the holidays. Last Sunday, we found ourselves at a Christmas Bazaar at the American Cathedral in Paris (an absolutely stunning Episcopalian church). We each picked out a Christmas stocking, which I'm going to finally get hung this week -- I'll post pictures in the next update.

There really wasn't a convenient metro connection to get us across the river to the American Church (where we've been attending), so we decided to walk.

Our path took us across the Pont D'Alma bridge, which used to hold a replica of the flame held by the Statue of Liberty. After Princess Diana's car crashed in the adjacent tunnel in 1997, people used the flame as a makeshift memorial site: so much so that flower, candles, notes, et cetera began to blow off the bridge and into the traffic passing below. The flame has been relocated to one side of the bridge, but -- eleven years after the accident! -- people are still leaving all kinds of tributes there.


The American Church bills itself as the 'Beacon on the Seine,' which I really understood when I spotted the green spire in front of me. It was chartered in 1814, but has stood on the present site since 1930.


I snuck a couple of pictures of the sanctuary today, just before the service began. All the Christmas decorations are up, and it both looks and smells like Christmas because they add fresh evergreen branches each week.


After the services today, Matt and I decided that we were in need of a study break, so we went back to Angelina's for "L'African", their famous hot chocolate that I had so enjoyed a few weeks ago and was very excited to get to share with Matt this time. We also enjoyed a mont blanc, the recipe of which is a house secret. It was incredibly delicious and unbelievably rich -- maybe in a few weeks, we'll go back for another taste and a few more guesses!